


if we're gonna do this, we gotta do it now

by floatingonthelehigh



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Fluff, Fluffy Ending, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, it's short and sweet and just what you need
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-26
Updated: 2017-09-26
Packaged: 2019-01-05 14:40:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12191883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/floatingonthelehigh/pseuds/floatingonthelehigh
Summary: “How did you convince me to come here again?”“My irresistible charm, of course.”Ryan's mouth settles into a hard line. He's not wrong.(Shane gets Ryan to come to an old abandoned house with him. One of them, and you'll never guess who, gets more than a little freaked out. Featuring: pure terror! confessions of love! and a somewhat-terrifying framed photograph of a woman!)





	if we're gonna do this, we gotta do it now

**Author's Note:**

> y'all want some short and sweet shane/ryan? i got you.
> 
> (title based on a very good song called While We're Young by Department of Eagles)

Ryan’s hand hovers above the doorknob for a moment, his eyes unfocused, as his heart begins to pound in his ears.

“You’re scared.”

Ryan whips his head to look back over his shoulder. He drags his gaze up to Shane’s shit-eating grin, wide across his face. He’s rocking back and forth on his heels with glee, hands shoved into the pockets of his jean jacket.

“I’m  _ not _ ,” Ryan insists, narrowing his eyes. “I’m just...I’m...shut up.” With a resigned sigh, he grabs the knob, twists, and pushes the door open. It creaks, painfully loud, until there’s an opening a foot wide. Dust particles pour out of the doorway and dance in the beam of light from Ryan’s phone flashlight. A gust of wind blows across the porch in the silence, and Ryan shivers. He can’t help but stare blankly into the pitch blackness of the house. He’s already feeling so, so incredibly stupid. “See? I pushed the door open. I’m not scared at all.” 

A hand comes down on his shoulder and Ryan flinches, retracting in on himself. Shane leans in close, his mouth practically on Ryan’s ear.

“Now all that’s left is to go inside,” he whispers, in the most mocking voice imaginable. Nevertheless, Ryan is practically trembling. “Go on ahead.” Shane says to him.

“...You first.” Ryan murmurs, before stepping to the side and out of Shane’s grip. He turns to his friend, who instantly raises his eyebrows. The delight in his eyes is infuriating.

“No, please, after you.”

Ryan plays along instinctively, copying Shane’s joking cadence. “Oh, I insist.” He gestures to the door.

“Fine.” Shane deadpans, looking slightly annoyed. He looks towards the open door, then back to Ryan, and sighs. Before he passes the threshold, Shane takes a step towards Ryan, lifts a finger, and touches Ryan’s nose. His eyes are fucking sparkling.  “You, my friend, are scared shitless.” 

Ryan wants to bite his finger. But Shane turns after a moment, pushes the door open further, and steps into the darkness.  Ryan is left bitterly conflicted—his cheeks are burning from Shane’s quick touch and he very badly wants to be as close to the man in front of him as possible—yet he’s about to walk into a fucking haunted-ass abandoned house where _ satanic rituals _ take place and—

_Wow_. Has Shane’s ass always looked that good in those jeans? He wears those jeans practically every other day, which Ryan  has pointed out before.  _ They’re good pants, they don’t make a lot of good pants for beanpoles like me. Don’t you mock me, Ryan Bergara _ . But right now, as Shane’s walking further into the darkness in front of him, it’s suddenly a lot for Ryan to handle. 

“Shit,” Ryan accidentally whispers out loud. There’s no time for this. There’s literally a situation going on right now, a fucking  _ terrifying _ situation at that.  _ Get your damn mind in check. _

He still can’t help it. He glances a few more times as he steps through the doorway.

Ryan begins aiming his flashlight around the room. Shane has the same idea—illuminating the decaying walls, the peeling wallpaper, the dusty remains of overturned furniture. A wave of dread passes over Ryan’s body, and he shudders as he turns around himself. It is indeed creepy as fuck in here.

"Check this gal out," Shane says, and Ryan turns to see a framed photograph on one of the walls, surrounded by water stains. The woman is smiling in the photograph, but there's something about the fact that there's a photo of a woman in this abandoned house that makes Ryan's skin crawl. Shane seems entertained, though, talking to the woman as if she's in the room with them. "Lovely home you have here, ma'am. I promise we'll leave this place better than we found it." He turns and picks up a dusty, overturned side table, and places it upright on its legs. "There. Good as new."

Shane turns to Ryan with a smile, showing off his handiwork. Ryan merely shakes his head.

“How did you convince me to come here again?” 

“My irresistible charm, of course.”

Ryan's mouth settles into a hard line. He's not wrong. 

 

Ryan can trace it all back to the very beginning, with Shane needing a 19th Century History tutor. He was going to fail the course if he didn’t get his act together and bother to take notes in class, instead of insisting his  _ intense brainpower _ could remember specific dates. And he told Ryan this upfront, when Ryan first replied to his tutor request.  _ I’m fucked, man. Please help un-fuck me, _ is how he’d signed their first email.  _ Best, Shane Madej _ .

They met at the campus library every Tuesday and Thursday at eight, until Shane was up to a B in the class and they were permanently banned from the library’s studying tables for laughing too loud. They got along well,  _ too _ well, like they’d known each other for years. It’s been two months since Shane’s 19th Century History class ended and they still hanging out, way more than they did before. More than is normal, apparently, according to Ryan’s roommate.

But while out to lunch last Saturday, Shane convinced Ryan to come to an abandoned house he’d once been to, back when he thought he was a rebellious teen. Shane made sure to mention during his pitch that some people claim that satanic rituals have taken place in there, and even more enticingly—there's  _ ghosts _ . Shane knew for a fact that Ryan lives and breathes for conspiracy theories and everything paranormal, and foolishly, Ryan had wholeheartedly fell for every bit of it. 

In his defense, Ryan’s judgement was pretty clouded with the fantasy of spending  _ even more time _ with Shane. And if he could prove that ghosts are fucking  _ real _ at the same time, a night in a haunted house couldn’t be too bad, right?

He now realizes that he is, in fact, a damn fool.   


 

“Har de har. Good one.”   


“What, is that not it?” Shane asks, as he and Ryan gravitate towards one another in the middle of the dilapidated living room. “Why else would you have agreed? You claim you wanna prove that this place is  _ haaaunted _ ,” he teases, twiddling his fingers and everything, “but clearly we’ve established you are petrified of anything remotely paranormal.”

“Well  _ yeah  _ I’m scared of ghosts,” Ryan admits. “Why wouldn’t I be? It’s like something’s all around us in here, like someone’s fucking breathing down my neck. You don’t feel anything?”

“I feel nostalgia for my youth when I thought smoking weed in abandoned houses was cool.” Shane answers.

Ryan can’t help laugh, but his smile soon falls back into an uneasy grimace. He keeps his back to Shane as his light scans the hall to his left, his heart skipping for a moment when his flashlight comes across a cockroach skittering across the wall. God, he’s jumpy.

“Well why would  _ you _ want to come here? I know you don’t believe in ghosts,  _ somehow _ . You’re not even the slightest bit interested in the supernatural.”

“I’m interested in you.” Shane answers immediately, somewhat under his breath. Ryan turns just as Shane’s gaze flits to him, eyes meeting for a moment. And just like that, Shane’s eyes widen a bit in panic, and Ryan’s mouth falls slightly open. “I mean, like, I’m interested in what you think of—”

And then they hear a small thump from behind the closed door to their right.

“What the  _ fuck _ was that?” Ryan asks, aiming his flashlight towards the door. The beam of light is shaking along with Ryan’s hand.

Shane clears his throat before he answers. “Uh. Old house. Buncha junk lying around. Things fall over. Ryan—”

“Either someone is in here or that’s a fucking ghost. Things don’t just  _ fall over _ .”

It takes Shane a second to respond. “Well let’s go check it out.” 

“Are you out of your mind?” Ryan aims his flashlight right at Shane’s face, who squints and raises his hand to block his eyes. His cheeks are pink, but Ryan is still too scared out of his mind to imagine why.

Ryan moves the light away, but watches Shane’s face in the dark as he blinks a few times, notices Ryan is looking, and smiles. “C’mon, it’ll be fun.”   


Ryan immediately shakes his head. “Uh, no. No fucking way. I’m not gonna die from some...satanic cult of ghosts type shit in here.” 

Shane raises his hands in defeat. “Fine! Then I’ll go in there, _all alooone_.” He moves towards the door, looking back at Ryan with every few steps. “See? No ghosts got me yet. I’m opening the door and I’m still alive.” He twists the knob, this door creaking even louder than the last one, like it hasn’t been opened in years.  _ Fuck _ . Ryan is going to watch his best friend die right now, isn’t he?

“Shane,” Is all he can manage, his voice suddenly hoarse.

“I’m walking into the room, see?” Shane calls. He steps through the door, turns to his right and walks out of view. “All good!” 

Ryan swallows, his flashlight beam shaking faster. “Shane, this sucks.”

“....Okay. There’s something drawn on the floor here.” Shane says. Ryan’s body goes ice cold. “A _pentagram_? Yeah, it’s a pentagram. That’s weird.”

Ryan feels his heartbeat in his ears again. When he speaks, his voice has raised an octave. “So there  _ is  _ satanic shit going on here?”

“Apparently so.” Shane answers. Ryan feels so uneasy, so  _ alone _ in this other room. The ghosts are breathing down his neck. He hates this so fucking much.

“...I’m gonna lay on it.” Shane calls from the other room.

“ _ No _ !” Ryan immediately protests. “No no  _ no _ god Shane no please  _ don’t _ .”

“Here I goooo! Don’t mind me steppin’ on your funny little symbols, demons.” 

“Shane,  _ please _ . Please Shane can we leave? Can you get the fuck out of there?”

“It’s fine Ryan, nothing’s gonna—” There’s a sharp  _ bang _ from the other room, followed by...the sound of someone _choking_. Oh  _ god _ —

“ _ SHANE _ .” Ryan feels tears instantly spring to his eyes—his feet, previously glued to the ground, are now unstuck—and he rushes forward and tears into the room, more than ready to  _ fight a goddamn demon _ .

But Shane is just standing there. There’s no pentagram on the floor, no flesh-hungry spirit, just Ryan’s favorite person in the world standing there, smiling...like the biggest asshole on the planet.

“ _ I had to _ .” Shane says, smiling wide before falling into a fit of giggles.

“You...were choking...and the demon...you fucking  _ asshole _ .” Ryan is panting, his adrenaline still flowing to the very tips of his fingers. “You _ scared me _ .” 

Shane’s smile drops slowly as Ryan stares at him, jaw clenched and tears still in his eyes.

“Shit, Ryan...I’m sorry.” Shane says, softly, after a moment. He takes a few steps forward and wraps his arms around Ryan’s shoulders, pulling him close. Ryan stands there, unmoving and so, so  _ angry,  _ but still sighing instinctively at how good it feels to have Shane just hold him. “I’m sorry, I’m dumb. That wasn’t funny.”

“No, not at all.” Ryan mutters into Shane’s jean jacket. “Can we fucking go?”

“Yeah...yeah, we can go. Let’s go.”

His voice has turned so soft. Ryan is so mad.

Ryan pushes softly against Shane’s chest, forcing himself out of his grip, and gets the fuck out of there. He trips over a loose floorboard on the way out and barely catches himself, stumbling out the door, only daring to breathe when he’s back in the night air. The yuck waves he was feeling while in the walls of that house immediately start washing away. Finally.

He walks briskly across the lawn to Shane’s car, trying to shake off the awful dread he’d just been feeling. Even if Shane was bullshitting him with the stupid pentagram, there was still that  _ noise _ . That noise with no reasonable explanation. There were still ghosts in there. He could feel it. 

Ugh, he never wants to feel like this again.   


“Ryan!” Shane calls, and Ryan can hear fallen leaves crunching in rhythm under his feet as Shane jogs to catch up to him. It only takes a few strides—of course, he’s so fucking tall.  “That was dumb, huh? I uh...I was just trying to make light of the situation.”

Ryan, instead of reaching for the car door, turns around to face him. “By freaking me the fuck out?”

“I…” Shane seems at a loss for words. Ryan’s never seen him like this before—staring at the ground, brow furrowed. “I shouldn’t have done that. I’m really sorry.” Ryan averts his eyes the moment Shane looks up at him. “I’m sorry…”

Ryan doesn’t want to look at him. He’s still trying to calm down the best he can. He knows there’s no way in hell that he’ll be able to stay mad at Shane for long, but right now...he can let himself seethe in it.

“This isn’t how I wanted tonight to go.” Shane says, quietly.

“Well what did you expect?” Ryan snaps, before laughing emptily. He’s really letting himself go all out. “For me to high-five you and say ‘good one’? Huh? How did you want tonight to go?”

Shane blows air through his nose before he answers. “You really wanna know, Ryan?”

Ryan looks up, at that. Shane looks like he’s physically in pain. Ryan doesn’t know what to say. So Shane raises his eyebrows and takes that as a yes.

“I was hoping you’d be spooked...just enough to want to hold my hand.”

Ryan stares back at him, trying to make sense of the look in Shane's eyes. It's strangely familiar. His heart is suddenly pounding.

“I slipped up in there, like an idiot. I pretty much  _ told you _ , without doing the big speech and sweeping gesture I wanted to. And then I really fucked it up and decided to go all ‘demons got me’ improv. It was a joke in very poor taste. I’m dumb as hell. I really just wanted to be alone with you tonight." Shane suddenly pauses, just breathing as he gazes blankly towards the grass. 

Ryan feels like every one of this organs is shutting down in succession.

Shane breathes a laugh, raises a hand to his forehead, and continues. "I wanted to—at some point—tell you that you light up the fuckin’ sky, Ryan Bergara. That your laugh makes me giddy. That I saw you in the hall, once, before you tutored me. And I practically choked on my goddamn Arizona Iced Tea because I was thinking  _ that boy has the best arms I’ve ever seen in my damn life _  and you glanced in my direction. ” Shane pauses again, and he’s shaking his head to himself, smiling in somewhat disbelief, before looking back down. “I wanted to tell you all that later tonight, maybe in front of your dorm after I drove you home, after I took you to a haunted house and slightly spooked you to the point that maybe I could be close to you. But then I had to fuck it up and now I’m telling it all to you now. Because, once again, I fucked up.”   


 

This really is the first time they’ve been alone. 

It’s a quiet street. The house is on its own back road, backed up against the forest. There's no other house for at least half a mile. It’s quiet—save for the crickets chirping behind them. The crickets and the wind, whistling through the trees above them, rattling the house's rusting mailbox. 

They had never been truly alone before. They’d hung out so often these past months, but always somewhere with people in general proximity. Somewhere with life. Even if they were sprawled out on Ryan's bed in his dorm, the doors were open, people passing by in the hallway. 

But they're really alone, now. Well, except for the ghosts.

“So...this was a date. This is what you wanted our first date to be.”   


Shane chews his upper lip. He looks like he’s in even more pain than before. He reaches up, grips the bridge of his nose for a second. “Uh. Yeah,” He nods, before dropping his hand and kicking a small rock on the side of the curb.“It sounded pretty nice, in concept.”

Ryan doesn’t know how to react. His heart is beating out of his chest. It's so quiet. They're alone. Shane is an asshole and Ryan wants to kiss him. So badly. 

“You think I have nice arms.” Ryan starts. Reality is long gone, by now. He's staring the moonlight touching the tips of Shane's hair, admiring the way Shane's chest moves when he breathes. Shane still won't look up, though.

“Oh fuck, Ryan, don’t make me do this. I’m already irreversibly embarrassed.” Ryan examines the way Shane sighs, still staring at the ground. He then shrugs jokingly, glancing up for a second. “I mean yeah, they’re nice arms. Ryan, let’s just go home—”

Ryan does it before any sense of fear can stop him. Besides, why _should_ he be scared? This whole time, Shane has _liked him too_. All those times they quipped back and forth, intent on making the other laugh or roll their eyes, they could have been doing _this_.

Shane makes a noise as Ryan's lips touch his, and Ryan feels the ground leave his feet. He's fucking floating, he's died, he's become a damn ghost. The kiss is short and soft, and absolutely everything Ryan has ever wanted.

Ryan pulls back, letting go of the back of Shane's neck, and opening his eyes. Shane is right there, staring down at him, wide eyed.

“Could we maybe just go to a restaurant for our next date?” Ryan asks. He delights in Shane's face, contorting into confusion, before he blinks a few times and there's nothing but wonder in his eyes. 

“Wait, so you...?"

“Yeah, I do.” Ryan whispers. His voice cracks on that last word.

“You like me too?” Shane asks, his voice barely half a whisper. Ryan is beaming, his heart fucking bursting as he nods. " _WAHOOOOO!!_ " Shane cries, grabbing Ryan around his middle and lifting him into the air. Ryan is so happy he can't stop laughing, so happy that he doesn't protest when Shane spins him around while holding him tight, practically crushing him. Finally, Shane sets him down on the ground and grabs Ryan's face, kissing him hard. Shane's hand moves to Ryan's back and pulls him closer, and Ryan appreciates the passion, but—

"Ow." Ryan says, breaking their kiss and speaking right into Shane's mouth.

"Shit, sorry." Shane says, immediately letting go of the grip on his back. "I guess I thought...you and your _thick_ arms...I was just trying to keep up."

Ryan can't stop smiling, but shakes his head anyway. "Shut the fuck  _up_."

Shane pulls him in again, softer this time, and Ryan feels the world fall away again.

 

“And then we fucked in my car," Shane says, staring into the distance. Ryan chokes on his beer.

"We did _not_." Ryan hisses. He looks around the restaurant, making sure none of the other booths just heard what his awful, _awful_ boyfriend just said _very loudly_.

"I know." Shane says, sipping a long island iced tea and grinning. "But imagine how much better that night would've been if we did." Shane winks at that, and even though his heart still races with his own boyfriend flirting with him, Ryan makes a point to roll his eyes to the fucking moon. Shane continues. "But babe, let's just establish this for posterity— It wasn’t a bad date.” 

Ryan shakes his head before reaching under the table to take Shane's hand. It's Shane who slightly flinches, a millisecond of fear flashing across his expression. 

There. Now they're even. 

Ryan slowly and comfortably laces their fingers together.

“No, it wasn’t that bad.”

**Author's Note:**

> leave a comment if you wanna! thanks for reading :)


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